Myanmar President Thein Sein urged Monday for an end to intercommunal violence and discrimination after hearing a call from US President Barack Obama to put a stop to anti-Muslim attacks. In a speech after his landmark White House meeting, the leader of the former pariah nation said he wanted a "more inclusive national identity" but did not directly mention the plight of the beleaguered Rohingya community. "Myanmar people of all ethnic backgrounds and all faiths -- Buddhists, Muslims, Christians and others -- must feel part of this new national identity," he said.

By Jared Ferrie SITTWE, Myanmar (Reuters) - Authorities in Myanmar struggled on Wednesday to evacuate tens of thousands of people, most of them Rohingya Muslims, before a cyclone reaches camps in low-lying regions that have been their home since ethnic and religious unrest last year. Cyclone Mahasen has already killed at least seven people and displaced 3,881 in Sri Lanka, its Disaster Management Center said on Tuesday.

Dozens of Rohingya Muslims are missing after their boats capsized off Myanmar as they fled a looming cyclone, police said Tuesday, amid fears tens of thousands of displaced people are in the path of the storm. About seven vessels hit trouble on Monday night after leaving Pauktaw township in Rakhine state in search of safety, according to a Myanmar police official in the capital Naypyidaw.

Myanmar's authorities were on alert Saturday as a cyclone threatened to hit the west of the country where around 140,000 people displaced by communal violence languish in flood-prone camps. Local radio in Rakhine State, rocked last year by violence between Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims, issued warnings while loudspeakers relayed messages to people in villages, Ye Htut, spokesman for the President's Office, said on his official Facebook page.